Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Various - Trade: Past Present Future

Beechwood Music: 2000

More than just another UK superclub, Trade’s legacy will forever be as important as Warehouse, Paradise Garage, and other early gay clubs championing that house sound. While there was no shortage of such venues at the turn of the ‘90s, they were still subject to standard clubbing curfews, leaving patrons with little more to do than wander streets and parks as they kept the party vibes going the morning after. Thanks to some wheelin’ and dealin’ by founder Laurence Malice, however, an afterhours slot at Turnmills was secured, one of the first ever in the UK. With an ad campaign specifically offering a safer alternative for post-clubbing all-night benders, Trade quickly flourished, becoming one of the UK’s dance music institutions, and launching the careers of many notable DJs (Tony de Vit, Tall Paul, Fergie).

And like any successful clubnight with a brand reaching global status, Trade got in on that DJ mix CD market too. Its first series of double-discers came out in the mid-‘90s on EMI offshoot Feverpitch, successfully promoting a hard house stylee the club was growing famous for. When the label folded after a mere two years, Trade eventually found a new home on Beechwood Music, kicking off with Past Present Future, two CDs supplying all the sounds you might hear at an all-nighter in Turnmills.

By this point in Trade’s lifespan, the clubnight had grown large enough for a second room playing funkier house music, from which production duo The Sharp Boys were instrumental in running. CD1 mostly focuses on their sound, and they definitely run the gamut. Groovy garage opens things up, loopy disco escalates the tempo (yep, Loleatta Holloway still going strong), and you can’t have such a set without a soul-sista’ monolog (Antoine Clamaran’s Get Up). The Boys take a turn for the tribal (X-Press 2), offer some bouncy house (DJ Antoine’s Do It has a donk on it), hit you with a little tech-house action (Smoking Schoolboy’s Tell Me (Detention Mix)), finally unleashing an unabashed anthem in Bryon Stingily’s Stand Up Right. Oh, and they finish off with an Armin & Tiësto collab’ of Eternity. Because clearly a club catering to hard house heads crave that Dutch cheese, absolutely.

With so much genre hopping, CD1’s an erratic set at best, and hardly indicative of the pummeling sound Trade’s all-nighters were built around. Step up to CD2 then, where ‘future’ representative Gonzalo Santiago hits you with a full mix of NRG! The beats come hard, some tracks have hoovers, others have acid, and build-ups are blessedly brief. I don’t have much else to say about it, my knowledge of NRG severely lacking. It’s fun for the time I play it, but I don’t want to play it much after. Not even that Baby Doc rub of Praga Khan’s Injected With A Poison.